Chapter 2
brADLEY
After my cellmate left, I spent what felt like an entire geological era split between pacing, sitting, and remembering not to touch the door. Each time I approached, I remembered his sneer as he reminded me about the effect of touching the magically sealed door.
More fool you, Bradley. Just like I hadn’t noticed what was happening with the scroll until it was too late.
“Sir? Please stand up against the back wall.” I hadn’t even heard the agent approach or disarm the door.
His hand rested on something at his hip, and in some distant part of my brain, I catalogued it as a handgun, presumably augmented with spell work on the sides.
I was squinting through the frosted glass, trying to see the wording, when the agent said, “He’s not listening. Get the restraints.”
Immediately, I backed up to stand against the wall as instructed, both hands raised. “No. No restraints necessary. I’m fine. Whatever you need. Thank you.”
The agent grinned his Cheshire grin, glancing at the other officer beside him.
I winced. “Thank you” had been overkill, but I’d never been in this situation before, and Mother had always said a little politeness went a long way toward greasing any social wheels.
Whenever she said that, Father would say that our money was all the grease we needed.
The door swung open, and I found myself trembling for a moment as the officers walked inside. The one with a weapon gestured me forward, still smiling. I took a few hesitant steps, then paused.
“It’s not that I don’t want out of this room, but I do need to know that this isn’t going to end with my body abandoned in an alley?” My voice went up at the end of the sentence, and I winced. Taking a deep breath, I raised my chin. “I would like to call my lawyer?”
I flinched, biting my lip. The uptick made it sound more like a question than it was, and I tried my hardest to channel Elaine. Shoulders back, meet their gaze.
“He wants to call his lawyer,” the agent with the gun chuckled.
“I want to speak to my counsel. Now.” This time, I kept my voice flat, even. Elaine never had questions about anything in her life. When she wanted something, it happened.
The other agent’s grin was even more saccharine, somehow even more frightening. He nudged me forward. “If you would kindly move, please.”
My certainty crumbled. We passed by other boxes, and I caught brief glimpses of other people through the frosted windows.
I didn’t see the man who had shared my room earlier, and I couldn’t help but be grateful.
My hysteria, the panic I had felt when I realized what was happening, made me feel ashamed now.
Swallowing, I shook my head. It shouldn’t matter that such an attractive man had seen me looking no better than one of the oracles in the park. What mattered was the facts.
“Please, I understand that you caught me in an awkward situation, but I need to talk to someone in charge. There are forces at work that are beyond what you or I can handle.” I followed the agent’s directions into another small room, the only decorations a metal table, two folding chairs, and a small black camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling.
The agent guided me into a chair, locking my hands to the table with a pair of iron manacles.
They were old and covered with spell work.
Pre-Edwardian language, I noted. Who built them?
They’d obviously been around longer than the building, unless they had someone on staff who spoke the pre-Edwardian magical tongues.
But that was unlikely given—
“Bradley Brooks,” someone said, slapping a thick file folder down on the table.
I yelped, jerking in my chair, the chains rattling.
My heart pounded in my chest, breath coming fast. I hadn’t even heard her come in.
Looking around, I realized the agents were gone.
How long had I been here, focusing on something as ridiculous as the magical languages being used to keep me in chains?
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, that’s me. I just… I need to speak with someone in charge, please. There’s a situation that someone needs to address, it’s critical—”
“There’s a lot of things that are ‘critical’ with you.” The woman dragged the chair out from the other side of the table, the legs screaming on the concrete floor.
I winced at the sound and blinked when I caught a good view of her. Sharp features, aquiline nose, high cheekbones, plush lips, and an eyepatch. If I had to guess, there might have been some fae in her blood, but what really struck me was the badge pinned to her shirt.
I was no expert on the MEA, but even I recognized what the dark stripe across the symbol meant.
“Oh, good, you’re a commander. Please—”
“Bradley Brooks,” the woman repeated. She flipped open my file, pulling out a sheet of paper and examining it. “Given everything, I’m shocked we haven’t met before this. Destroying magical artifacts as an undergraduate.”
I hastened to explain. “I wasn’t destroying them. The Harvard University magical department simply didn’t understand the danger of allowing other students access to—”
“Of course Daddy bought the magical studies department a new wing, so I can see why we weren’t called in there.
But during your graduate work? An entire dissertation on Hive dynamics, arguing that the locusts, despite being mythical, could be tied to real-world crop destruction.
” She leaned forward, lacing her fingers together, and I was caught by her single eye, my face heating at the mocking glint in it.
“Yet, despite being laughed out of your thesis defense, you still ended up with a PhD.”
“It was only one person laughing. It wasn’t—it’s simply that—that is a vast simplification of what my thesis actually was. If we look at how the insect locusts destroy crops, then we compare it to what historical records about the Hive—”
“Myths,” she said sharply, a correction that flustered me even more.
My heart sped. “If we compare it to what historical records say,” I continued, “then we do have a very good model for how the Hive were able to wipe out most of the magical practitioners in Europe.”
The commander made a humming sound and raised both eyebrows. “Strange how Columbia University’s arcane studies department was able to build a new lab after you received your PhD.”
I swallowed, sharply aware of how the donation of the Brooks Family Lab looked, even though I had never even asked. Father had simply given.
“Postgraduate work.” She flipped over another page and shook her head, sucking in air. “It seems we were called in there. A small fire in the historical records department. It destroyed documents that were over two thousand years old.”
My back straightened, chin going up. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“I’m sure you didn’t. After all, the records show you were on a vacation in northern New York at the time, cell phone unavailable, no way to transport in and out without a helicopter.
” She placed the sheet of paper back inside the file, straightening the edges so that they lined up precisely.
“Very convenient, given that what was destroyed was a document related to Hive summoning rituals.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was on vacation. When I returned, someone had set fire to the records. It affected me too! My research was set back months by no longer having access to the originals.”
My heart beat so loudly in my chest, I was sure she heard it. It was a marching drum banging away. No. Elaine would never reveal any weakness. Even when she was standing next to the broken lamp, baseball bat in hand, it was impossible for her to have done anything wrong.
“Doubly so, when it turned out the digital files had also been corrupted.” The woman leaned back in her chair. “So. Should we expect a visit from the Brooks family retainers? Maybe the MEA gets a new break room out of this? A meditation room? A masseuse on staff?”
My shoulders slumped. If I called, that would be giving in. Father would be disappointed. Mother would be relieved. Elaine would be… unbearable.
“No?” The woman smirked. “No. I didn’t think so. The little black sheep of the family never asked Daddy for all of this… largess. Are you ready to tell me about JA Williams?”
I looked up, feeling something in my chest loosen. Finally, someone was listening. “Yes. He asked me to authenticate a document related to the Hive. But you need to understand, it wasn’t a normal historical record, or even a firsthand account, it was about summoning—”
The woman began setting pictures on the table, lining them up like soldiers on a parade ground. My stomach turned over. The people in the photos were corpses.
“We know you’re working with him. We know what he’s doing.
So you’re going to flip, you’re going to show us that little yellow belly that let Daddy buy your degrees, and you are going to give us all the information we need to arrest JA Williams for murdering mundanes.
” She finished, the nine pictures making a neat square on the table. “Start talking.”
“I—I—I—” I shut my mouth, biting down on the stutter that wanted to burst out.
I had never seen a dead body before. Of course, I’d seen them in movies, but they weren’t actual dead bodies, and the occasional newspaper article with a photo of human remains always showed them covered by a white sheet.
This was something else entirely. My stomach turned over, and I swallowed down the burn of acid in my throat. These people were dismembered, the blood spreading out from their bodies. I had never seen anything like it. Certainly not with the clinical precision of the MEA cameras.
The woman swiped on each of the photos and the views shifted, giving me a new angle on the crime that would live behind my eyes for the rest of my life.
“I’m going to be sick.” I started to lean away, searching for a trash can, but the woman stood, leaning forward.
“Tell us what you know.” Her words were implacable.
“I don’t know anything about this!” There were no trash cans in the room, and I swallowed down on the bile, staring up at her so that I wouldn’t look at the pictures anymore. But they existed there too, superimposed on my vision. I couldn’t focus on anything but—
Frowning, I reached out and grabbed one of the pictures, swiping back on it until I found the image.
“You know her? Or are you just admiring—”
I cut the woman off. “I know what he’s doing. Oh my God. You have to listen to me. We only have a limited amount of time. Are these all the people he’s killed?”
I swept all the pictures up, squinting at each one until I saw the same thing. Runes, carved into the rib bones. Just small enough that they might look like damage from whatever weapon had been used to disembowel the people.
“Are you enjoying this? Looking at his handiwork?” The woman crossed her arms, frowning at me. “Or are you enjoying your handiwork?”
“The document he had me authenticate. It was specifically about calling the Hive back to our realm. Summoning them. I have no idea where he even found the document, but these runes, do you see them?” I slapped one of the pictures down, pinching insistently at the area until the picture enlarged.
“They are part of the ritual. He’s putting together blood sacrifices! ”
“The Hive.” The woman’s lips went tight. “And I suppose, for his next trick, JA Williams is planning on summoning the bogeyman? Or, no, the Easter Bunny.”
“You don’t understand. When I read the document, I read it out loud, to correct his mispronunciations. But when I said the words correctly, it started—”
“Let me tell you what I understand. Those marks you’re pointing at were left by the weapon Williams used.
We need to know what the weapon was and how he’s choosing these people.
We need to know where he’s hiding the weapon.
We need any eyewitness statements you have to make.
” The woman leaned forward. “Because, Bradley Brooks? Your daddy can’t buy your way out of MEA custody. ”
My back straightened. “I would like to talk to my attorney. Please and thank you.”
For a long, stretched moment, the woman glared at me. “This is your one chance to come clean. Because if you don’t tell me what you know right now, then the next time we talk to each other, you aren’t a witness. You’re a suspect.”
“I’ve never seen these people before. I never even met JA Williams before today.” I tapped the picture again. “Please, you have to believe me.”
“I believe what I know. And what I know is that JA Williams transferred a large sum of money into your bank account and has been quietly making donations to the Moraira City Magical Museum that supports your research specifically.”
The woman reached her hand out, and I returned the pictures. She tapped them on the table to straighten the little pile, placing them back inside the folder and shutting it decisively.
“I’m sure it’s hard to say no to the man who’s making your dreams of academic irrelevancy possible, but we are looking at a string of murders. Not some hunt for Bigfoot. Start talking, or you’re going down for this by yourself.”
I swallowed. “I don’t know anything about the killings. I just know what it looks like. Please.”
The woman shook her head, striding to the door. When she opened it, she gestured at me. “He’s going back to lockup.”